Handbook of Cities and Networks


Book Description

This Handbook of Cities and Networks provides a cutting-edge overview of research on how economic, social and transportation networks affect processes both in and between cities. Exploring the ways in which cities connect and intertwine, it offers a varied set of collaborations, highlighting different theoretical, historical and methodological perspectives.




City Networks


Book Description

Sustainable development within urban and rural areas, transportation systems, logistics, supply chain management, urban health, social services, and architectural design are taken into consideration in the cohesive network models provided in this book. The ideas, methods, and models presented consider city landscapes and quality of life conditions based on mathematical network models and optimization. Interdisciplinary Works from prominent researchers in mathematical modeling, optimization, architecture, engineering, and physics are featured in this volume to promote health and well-being through design. Specific topics include: - Current technology that form the basis of future living in smart cities - Interdisciplinary design and networking of large-scale urban systems - Network communication and route traffic optimization - Carbon dioxide emission reduction - Closed-loop logistics chain management and operation - Modeling the effect urban environments on aging - Health care infrastructure - Urban water system management - Architectural design optimization Graduate students and researchers actively involved in architecture, engineering, building physics, logistics, supply chain management, and mathematical optimization will find the interdisciplinary work presented both informative and inspiring for further research.




World City Network


Book Description

Peter Taylor's compelling insights challenge us to view cities as part of a global network, divorced from the constraints of national or even regional boundaries.




The Connected City


Book Description

The Connected City explores how thinking about networks helps make sense of modern cities: what they are, how they work, and where they are headed. Cities and urban life can be examined as networks, and these urban networks can be examined at many different levels. The book focuses on three levels of urban networks: micro, meso, and macro. These levels build upon one another, and require distinctive analytical approaches that make it possible to consider different types of questions. At one extreme, micro-urban networks focus on the networks that exist within cities, like the social relationships among neighbors that generate a sense of community and belonging. At the opposite extreme, macro-urban networks focus on networks between cities, like the web of nonstop airline flights that make face-to-face business meetings possible. This book contains three major sections organized by the level of analysis and scale of network. Throughout these sections, when a new methodological concept is introduced, a separate ‘method note’ provides a brief and accessible introduction to the practical issues of using networks in research. What makes this book unique is that it synthesizes the insights and tools of the multiple scales of urban networks, and integrates the theory and method of network analysis.




Cities as Spatial and Social Networks


Book Description

This book reports on the latest, cutting-edge scholarship on integrating social network and spatial analyses in the built environment. It sheds light on conceptualization and Implementation of such integration, integration for intra-city level analysis, as well as integration for inter-city level analysis. It explores the use of new data sources concerning human and urban dynamics and provides a discussion of how social network and spatial analyses could be synthesized for a more nuanced understanding of the built environment. As such this book will be a valuable resource for scholars focusing on city-related networks in a number of ‘urban’ disciplines, including but not limited to urban geography, urban informatics, urban planning, urban sociology, and urban studies.




The City of Tomorrow


Book Description

Since cities emerged ten thousand years ago, they have become one of the most impressive artifacts of humanity. But their evolution has been anything but linear—cities have gone through moments of radical change, turning points that redefine their very essence. In this book, a renowned architect and urban planner who studies the intersection of cities and technology argues that we are in such a moment. The authors explain some of the forces behind urban change and offer new visions of the many possibilities for tomorrow’s city. Pervasive digital systems that layer our cities are transforming urban life. The authors provide a front-row seat to this change. Their work at the MIT Senseable City Laboratory allows experimentation and implementation of a variety of urban initiatives and concepts, from assistive condition-monitoring bicycles to trash with embedded tracking sensors, from mobility to energy, from participation to production. They call for a new approach to envisioning cities: futurecraft, a symbiotic development of urban ideas by designers and the public. With such participation, we can collectively imagine, examine, choose, and shape the most desirable future of our cities.




Cities, Networks, and Global Environmental Governance


Book Description

As a result of global dynamics--the increasing interconnection of people and places--innovations in global environmental governance haved altered the role of cities in shaping the future of the planet. This book is a timely study of the importance of these social transformations in our increasingly global and increasingly urban world. Through analysis of transnational municipal networks, such as Metropolis and the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, Sofie Bouteligier's innovative study examines theories of the network society and global cities from a global ecology perspective. Through direct observation and interviews and using two types of city networks that have been treated separately in the literature, she discovers the structure and logic pertaining to office networks of environmental non-governmental organizations and environmental consultancy firms. In doing so she incisively demonstrates the ways in which cities fulfill the role of strategic sites of global environmental governance, concentrating knowledge, infrastructure, and institutions vital to the function of transnational actors.




World City Network


Book Description

With the advent of multinational corporations, the traditional urban service function has 'gone global'. In order to provide services to globalizing corporate clients, the offices of major financial and business service firms across the world have generated networks of work. It is the myriad of flows between office towers in different metropolitan centres that has produced a world city network. Taylor and Derudder's unique and illuminating book provides both an update and a substantial revision of the first edition that was published in 2004. It provides a comprehensive and systematic description and analysis of the world city network as the 'skeleton' upon which contemporary globalization has been built. Through an analysis of the intra-company flows of 175 leading global service firms across 526 cities in 2012, this book assesses cities in terms of their overall network connectivity, the regional configurations they form, and their changing position in the period 2000-12. Results are used to reflect on cities and city/state relations in the context of the global ecological and economic crisis. Written by two of the foremost authorities on the subject, this book provides a much-needed mapping of the connecting relationships between world cities, and will be a valuable resource for students of urban studies, geography, sociology and planning.




City Diplomacy and the Europeanisation of Local Government


Book Description

This book assesses the processes and outcomes of international urban networks in Europe from 2007 to the present day. Focusing on Greece in particular, it examines 162 municipalities involved in more than 240 European city networks to shed light on the various factors that affect cities’ capacities to act as international actors. The book demonstrates that the participation of Greek municipalities in European city networks has entailed changes to local political structures, policies and procedures, as well as the strengthening of a ‘European’ identity and the creation of long-term partnerships. At the same time, these changes have often clashed with bureaucratic traditions and unfavorable economic conditions, which have mitigated the reformatory potential of European city networking. Providing important insights into city diplomacy and Europeanization, the book will appeal to scholars and students of public administration, European integration and political science, as well as professionals and practitioners.




Smart City Networks


Book Description

This book both analyzes and synthesizes new cutting-edge theories and methods for future design implementations in smart cities through interdisciplinary synergizing of architecture, technology, and the Internet of Things (IoT). Implementation of IoT enables the collection and data exchange of objects embedded with electronics, software, sensors, and network connectivity. Recently IoT practices have moved into uniquely identifiable objects that are able to transfer data directly into networks. This book features new technologically advanced ideas, highlighting properties of smart future city networks. Chapter contributors include theorists, computer scientists, mathematicians, and interdisciplinary planners, who currently work on identifying theories, essential elements, and practices where the IoT can impact the formation of smart cities and sustainability via optimization, network analyses, data mining, mathematical modeling and engineering. Moreover, this book includes research-based theories and real world practices aimed toward graduate researchers, experts, practitioners and the general public interested in architecture, engineering, mathematical modeling, industrial design, computer science technologies, and related fields.